


Row, row, row your boat

by emmerrr



Series: Only Fools Rush In [16]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Sharing a Bath, bubble baths, but get your minds out of the gutter this is wholesome stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 18:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14118063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmerrr/pseuds/emmerrr
Summary: “What. Why are you smiling at me,” he says suspiciously.Adam shrugs. “You’re cute.”“I’m not cute, I’m terrifying.”“Terrifyingly cute,” Adam says.





	Row, row, row your boat

A bath’s not something Adam has all that much experience with to be honest. They never had one at the double-wide, there was just a shower in his apartment at St. Agnes, and it was showers only at college, too. So whilst he’s had the odd one throughout the years, a bath is not an indulgence he’s overly familiar with.

At the Barns, there is a fantastic bathtub.

It’s enormous, for starters.

It’s a curved one so it’s comfier to sit in, and the faucet is at the back and in the centre rather than at one of the ends, so Adam can sit at whichever end he likes and doesn’t have to worry about a tap digging into his spine. 

It’s a pretty deep bath, and at the minute the water is swirling blues and pinks and purples and more, glittery bits dotted about like stars, thanks to an intergalactic bath-bomb that Ronan dropped in the water for Adam.

“That’s incredible,” Adam had said in awe. “Did you dream that?”

Ronan snorted. “Fuck no, Parrish. I got it from Lush.”

But the point is that now Adam is bathing in what looks like space water, and it’s awesome, even if it is going to leave a glittery mess behind in the tub, and probably all over Adam. Which sort of negates the point of having a bath in the first place, but he’s not thinking about that right now.

He’s relaxing. Which is also a novel concept.

A knock at the door jerks him out of a daydream and surprises him, making him lurch forward and splash the water.

“Fuck, Adam,” comes Ronan’s voice and then the door opens and Ronan rushes in looking alarmed, which soon turns to confusion when he sees Adam just sitting there. “I heard a splash…” 

“Your knock made me jump,” Adam says with a scowl.

“Shit, sorry,” Ronan says, but he starts to laugh which makes Adam scowl even more. “I thought you were drowning or something. Thought you might have fallen asleep.”

“No, I was  _trying_ to relax,” Adam says pointedly. “What are you  _doing_ here anyway? I’m in the bath.”

“Yes, I can see that, Parrish,” Ronan says cheerfully. He shuts the door behind him again, then comes and sits on the edge of the bath, running his fingers through the water. He grins. “I’m gonna show you something.”

“Show me what?” Adam asks warily.

Ronan grabs a bar of soap off the side of the sink and starts rubbing it between his hands. “When me and Declan were little, mom would put us in the bath together. A proper bubble bath with fuckin’ mounds and mounds of foamy bubbles.” He starts to smile as he tells the story and it tugs at Adam’s heart. “And she’d do this, she’d get the soap and rub it between her hands until they were really good and soapy, and if there’s  _just_ enough…” He trails off and inspects his hands, puts the soap on the edge of the bath, then rubs his hands together once more. He clasps his hands together, brings them to his mouth and blows. 

As Adam watches, a soap bubble starts to grow out of the small gap Ronan’s created between his hands. It grows until it’s about the size of a lime, and then it pops.

“Aw, man,” Ronan says. “That was shit, the ones mom made used to get so big before they popped.” He pouts for a second then picks up the soap to try again. When he glances up, he notices Adam watching him.

“What. Why are you smiling at me,” he says suspiciously.

Adam shrugs. “You’re cute.”

“I’m not cute, I’m terrifying.”

“Terrifyingly cute,” Adam says.

Ronan stares stonily for a moment, then he smirks and drops the soap in the water from high enough that it splashes Adam.

“ _Hey_ ,” Adam says indignantly, and pushes some of the water so it splashes Ronan. 

Ronan splashes back, obviously. And Adam’s already wet, so it’s not like getting splashed will do anything to him, but it’s the  _principle_  of the thing.

He leans forward, seizes Ronan’s shirt and yanks him off balance and into the tub.

Ronan’s all legs akimbo, his ass and torso in the tub as the galaxy water soaks into his clothes. There’s nothing worse than soaked jeans and Adam feels guilty for all of a second before Ronan’s momentarily shocked surprise transforms into a mischievous smile.

“Ronan,” Adam says, unsure of what’s about to happen. “I didn’t mean it, and you  _started_ it, and– Ronan,  _wait_ –”

But Ronan’s already moving; he pulls his legs in from where they’ve been dangling over the edge so that he’s now properly in the tub, then starts rocking backwards and forwards. He’s making a tsunami.

“Ronan  _stop_ ,” Adam says, but it’s hard to get the words out because he’s giggling so much. Water is steadily rocking up the edges of the tub, getting higher and higher until it’s got nowhere left to go. It starts cascading over the edge of the tub and spills onto the tiled floor. “You’re–making–a– _mess_!”

“How am I making a mess? It’s soap and water,” Ronan argues, but he settles down and the waves he’s made start to recede.

“It’s space water. There’s gonna be glitter all over the floor.  _And_ your clothes are soaked now.”

Ronan stands up and takes his shirt off, scrunching it up and squeezing it over Adam’s head so the water drips all over him and down his face.

“You  _ass_ ,” Adam complains, but Ronan laughs and steps out of the tub.

“If you wanted me to take my clothes off all you had to do was ask, Parrish,” he says, and Adam pointedly doesn’t look while Ronan strips his jeans off; he doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“You certainly think a lot of yourself,” he says instead.

“I do. I really do.” Ronan starts rummaging about in one of the cupboards, and then says, “Aw yes! I  _knew_ they were still around here somewhere.”

“What?”

“Matthew’s old bath toys.”

Adam looks up and Ronan holds a box in one hand, rifling through it with the other. He comes back over to the edge of the bath and starts dropping things into the water, which is nowhere near as full as it was, not to mention the temperature’s dipping. Adam turns the hot tap back on to fill it up more.

“We’ve got… a wind-up crocodile, wind-up frog, a boat, rubber duck, aaaand a wind-up shark,” Ronan says as he chucks them all in. He tosses the box aside and gets back into the water.

Adam holds up the frog and raises his eyebrows. “What do we need these for?”

“Can’t have a bath without bath toys, Parrish.”

“I was doing just fine before  _you_ showed up.”

“No. You were having a bath wrong, is what  _you_  were doing,” Ronan says, and he grins sharply. “You’re so lucky I came to bother you.”

Adam can’t help but smile back. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

Ronan’s smile turns tender, just for a second. And then he reaches for the shark and he winds it up and sends it down the opposite end towards Adam.

That’s how they spend thee next fifteen minutes or so, two grown boys in a space-water bath, sending wind-up toys from one end to the other and intermittently trying Ronan’s mom’s soap trick to blow bubbles.

It’s not long before they’re both sporting pruney fingers and have to think about getting out, but with their legs entwined under the water and cheeks that hurt from laughing so hard, Adam thinks there are worse ways to spend an evening.

Much, much worse.


End file.
